Nida, Lithuania

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The house of Thomas Mann

Nida from Curonian lagoon

Old cemetery

Small inn and cafe in Nida

Nida (German: Nidden) is a Lithuanian town, located on the Curonian Spit.

1 History
2 Nida today
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

First mentioned by Teutonic Order documents in 1429 and 1497, the settlement was originally 2 km south of today's position. Continuously threatened by sand drifts, it was moved to today's position in 1784. Until 1945 it was a part of the German province of East Prussia.

In 1874 a lighthouse on Urbas hill was built, later destroyed by the Nazis and rebuilt in 1945 and 1953 by the Soviets.

In the beginning of 20th century, Nida became famous as acolony of German expressionists (Künstlerkolonie Nidden). Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Kirchner, Ernst Mollenhauer, Franz Domscheit, Herrmann Wirth and others were common guests. The painters usually took accommodations at the Herman Blode hotel, and left some of their works with him.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann lived in Nida during the summers of 1930-1932. His summer cottage survived and is currently a cultural center dedicated to the writer, with a small memorial exhibition.

After the evacuation of East Prussia, Nida became nearly uninhabited, like all of the Curonian Spit. After World War II, Nida was a little-visited fishing village. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir went to Nida during their stay in Lithuania in the summer of 1965. In the 1970s, together with three other villages of Neringa municipality (Juodkrantė, Preila and Pervalka), it was reserved as a by-invitation-only holiday resort with controlled entry regime and accommodation reserved almost exclusively for the Communist party nomenklatura and senior government and industry elite. Thanks to the very strict planning regulations, a ban on any industrial development and more generous municipal subsidies, it remained an unspoilt and clean territory. Today, the number of visitors is kept small by a low number of available hotel rooms (as all new developments are permitted only on old building footprint), very high accommodation prices, ferry tolls and entry pass costs.

[edit] Nida today

Today Nida has 1,650 residents and is an administrative center of the Neringa municipality. The town is an upmarket holiday resort, hosting about 50,000 tourists each summer, mostly Lithuanians, Latvians, Russians and Germans. It is characterized by very low-key entertainment and a distinct family focus.

Since 2000, a jazz festival has been organised every year. There are also interesting places to see nearby, including some of the highest sand dunes in Europe, a large sundial (now partially destroyed by storm), fisherman's ethnographic museum, gallery-museum of amber, neo-gothic church (built in 1888). There is a camping on the town-side.